There have been increasing occurrences of car thieves assaulting a driver or passenger of a car and forcibly taking the car and abducting the driver or passenger of the car, i.e. “carjacking” or “carnapping”. When confronted with such a situation, the abductee desires to escape to safety, or if that is not possible to notify the authorities.
On prior art solution to prevent carjacking is to sound an alarm and/or disable the vehicle through various means at the time of the carjacking. However, this may cause the thief to become angry and attack or harm the driver. Therefore, this solution is not desirable in a carjacking situation. In addition, such prior art systems are known to car thieves and can be disarmed, rendering them ineffective.
Another prior art solution is to use a panic button type of system, wherein a user need only press one button to summon assistance. Such buttons can be obvious or hidden. However, this solution suffers from the same problems as the previous solution. Namely, a car thief will know of this device and can prevent its use by assaulting the driver. Therefore, this solution is also not desirable in a carjacking situation.
What is needed is a method and system that can covertly notify appropriate authorities during a carjacking. It would be desirable if the method and system is configured such that a car thief will not know of the existence or operation thereof.